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Letting Go!
Mara Fox
Emma Daniels wanted a wild sexfest–and she got it. After being cheated on by her very boring accountant boyfriend, executive secretary Emma decided to go on vacation and get crazy with the most exciting man she could find. Along came Andres, the Latin lover she met on a singles cruise. And after doing everything possible in bed with Andres, she returned home with a big smile on her face….Which quickly disappeared when she ran into sexy, thrilling "Andres" at the office working as the new systems analyst, of all things. His name wasn't even Andres–it was Tony! Apparently he'd been playing a little game himself while away. And when confronted, what did he have the nerve to say? "There are a few more things I think we should try…."
“You wanted a stranger. I just went along with you.”
Tony looked haggard, as if he hadn’t slept since the cruise. “You don’t know how I’ve felt, knowing I might lose you all over again once you knew the truth,” he continued.
“You never had me to lose. You agreed it was just going to be sex and you would walk away!” How could Emma be so angry that he hadn’t really walked out of her life when just moments ago she’d been cursing herself for letting him do just that? How could she want to throw herself into his arms and strangle him at the same time?
“I knew I’d have to see you again,” he said simply. “But I wanted you to have your fantasy first.”
She smiled grimly. “Yes, you were my fantasy, all right….” She wrapped her arms around her waist. “I don’t even know you.”
“Oh, I think we got to know each other rather intimately,” he said, cupping her chin in his hand. “I know that your eyes go all hazy when you get aroused, and I know the way you like to be stroked along your beautiful back. I know that you’re ticklish behind your knees and that you sigh in your sleep.”
He tilted her face so that she looked him in the eye. “And I think we both know that this fantasy isn’t over….”
Dear Reader,
When I won the Romantic Times BOOKclub Reviewers Choice Award for Best First Series Romance for 2004, I was writing for Harlequin Temptation. Then I was told that I would be writing my first book for Harlequin Blaze, and I was so intrigued. It couldn’t have come at a more remarkable time in my life—I’m single again. So Emma’s cruise into sexual experimentation might be based on my own voyage of sexual discovery. Of course, in the old days a lady never told, but today a lady not only tells, she goes for it!
I hope you enjoy discovering Emma’s sexual exploits with her Bahama boy toy. And I hope you’ll be excited to know that her best friend, Tina, is getting her own book. Because being a sexual mentor and sidekick just didn’t do this girl justice. She’s got a stripper in her wrong bed and what she does with him will heat up your sheets! Be sure to read it in bed, preferably with someone to strip down for you!
I hope you enjoy reading about these very different but enticing women stepping up to the challenge of finding a man who gives them all the pleasure they’ve dreamed about. Enjoy the adventure!
Sincerely,
Mara Fox
Letting Go!
Mara Fox
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After wandering the county as a military brat, author Mara Fox was happy to settle in a little Texas town with the friendliest people she’d ever met and the biggest sky she’d ever seen. And she thought it was like catching hold of one of those stars when she won the Romantic Times BOOKclub Reviewers Choice Award for Best First Series Romance for 2004. These days she’s going to college and spreading her single wings, both figuratively and not so figuratively. Turns out that Emma and Mara have a lot in common! There might even be a singles cruise to the Bahamas in the works….
I’m happy to dedicate this book to Brenda Chin,
the best editor, mentor and friend anyone could have
in her corner, especially in a tight spot.
Contents
Prologue (#u7c7fc03c-1357-55a0-b3af-c80f7b013dd7)
Chapter 1 (#ud718cd7f-bbc6-5733-8619-43af4b3c4f4e)
Chapter 2 (#uaade3cd8-05a7-50e8-8727-67013d0b8483)
Chapter 3 (#ua2603954-cdc7-5d43-9cb5-6430f2d8476d)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
GAZING THROUGH the glass at Emma, Anthony Enderlin wondered if this would be a good time to introduce himself to the woman who had lured him to the law firm of Anderson-Harding with her siren voice.
Though he felt they knew each other, they’d never actually met. They’d only spoken. And her voice had teased, cajoled and flirted with him, affecting him the way he imagined good phone sex might. It had stayed with him, sneaking into the most unexpected corners of his life.
And they’d only talked a couple of times while coordinating a work program.
It was damn disconcerting.
So he’d decided to come and do the computer installation himself. It would surely get her out of his system, so to speak. He’d sold the idea to his boss as a field test of sorts and vacation. Now he was spinning his wheels…lurking.
He heard footsteps in the hall. Emma’s best friend, the lady lawyer they called The Shark, was approaching, and feeling guilty, he stepped back as though he hadn’t been hanging around outside the employee break room like a moonstruck idiot.
He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. Turning, he headed towards the office where yet another lawyer would expect him to debug a computer constipated with porn, viruses and fragments of old games.
Which was a huge waste of his expertise.
After all, he was the designer of the software, and he’d coordinated the project with Emma, the company’s liaison. When he’d come to do the install, he hadn’t planned on spending his time cleaning up each and every lawyer’s computer system.
He’d hoped to do a bit more liaisoning.
With Emma.
Because that voice had flowed over him like silk and sex.
Tony had known that Emma couldn’t possibly look as good as she sounded. He knew he’d get over the infatuation when they finally met. Then they’d become friends because talking to Emma made him feel good. Besides, he was better at friendship than dating. For some reason, no matter how attractive the woman he was dating, one of his programs usually wooed him and the woman walked away.
What he needed was a woman who could seduce him from his cyber world.
The Shark walked by in sharp, echoing heels. He avoided eye contact by pretending to be reading the printout in his hand. Not that she’d know him. He’d managed to avoid her so far.
She was striking in a sleek way, but Emma’s softer beauty was even more attractive. Once he’d seen Emma, he’d had difficulty imagining her as just a friend. She looked like a character who had just stepped out of a Camelot novel. Or out of one of the role-playing games he preferred when he got tired of programming. He enjoyed adventures with knights, dragons, quests and swordplay.
He spent a lot of time rescuing the princess.
However, this princess had enough gumption to rescue herself, and he knew from their conversations that she was also a smart, funny, sexy woman, even if right now she was hiding out in the break room after a bad breakup.
So she was a bit self-conscious, too. Interesting.
It was a fascinating contradiction that Tony planned to examine closer. He no longer saw Emma becoming a friend, he wanted more. But he didn’t know how much more. They lived half a country apart. And he wasn’t a player—he spent too much time in front of a computer screen to be able to brag about his dating exploits. Then there was his short attention span.
So the “liaisoning” would be short-term. Better everyone understood that up front.
He could be charming, his sister had told him. And according to the office gossip, Emma had just gotten burned by a first-class jerk, so she might go for a gentleman.
They might have some laughs together.
He might get to listen to that silken voice at a much closer proximity. Whispering love words in his ear.
He smiled at his little fantasy.
So much for thinking like a gentleman.
So far he hadn’t even managed to meet her or shake her hand. Instead he was stuck purging computers. Making himself useful so the boss didn’t send him home.
It made his fingers itch. The longer she hid out, the more determined he was to uncover everything about Emma…
1
EMMA DANIELS sat in the break room looking gloomily at her sprouts-and-avocado sandwich. Beside the sandwich sat a supersize bar of white chocolate which she determinedly ignored.
I deserve this candy bar for holding my head up, but if I eat candy then I won’t be able to get into my skinny clothes so I can start the whole dating thing again.
Dating.
She sank lower in her seat, sighing at the dismal thought.
Since it was after two o’clock in the afternoon, she had the break room to herself, until her friend Tina Henderson breezed in looking like a million bucks in her green Gucci suit. Emma sat up straighter in her chair.
“Are you still mooning over that chocolate bar?”
“It’s a different one. I’m eating a new kind everyday.”
“You’re lying through those pearly whites. Have you been using whitening stripes again?”
Emma looked up. “I’m preparing for the most grueling ritual of our time—dating. That thing you do so effortlessly, like managing to look fresh in this humidity. My stupid hair’s frizzing all over the place.” She tugged self-consciously on her braid; it had been raining in Jacksonville, Florida, all month long.
“How can your hair curl? You’re wearing that French braid so tight my head aches in sympathy.”
Emma grimaced. “I’m thinking of getting it professionally straightened. How’d the case go?”
“Great. Easy. We won. When are you going to quit fooling around as a paper pusher and go back to school? I need someone sharp to be my paralegal. I need you.” Tina opened the fridge.
“I missed the deadline for night school again.”
“Why? I thought you were serious this time.”
“I am. But Melissa needed me. We’re getting everyone ready for the installation of the new computer program. It’s supposed to save all kinds of time and money and she begged me and then she bribed me with heavy overtime and used her I-know-what’s-best-for-you voice. The upside is I managed to pay off my credit cards. The downside is I was so busy I didn’t realize the deadline had come and gone.” Emma stuck out one foot, clad in a Jimmy Choo shoe. “I ended up shopping just to console myself. But next semester’s deadline is on my calendar in red ink and I’m not going to miss it no matter who needs me. This time I’m going to make sure I do something for myself.”
Thinking about her future security made her thoughts stray to her father’s midlife crisis. “You can only rely on yourself, and I’m not going to allow anyone else to sidetrack me this time,” she said hesitantly.
“That’s an excellent observation but I’m still afraid I’ll be retiring before you get around to it.”
Emma grimaced. “Part of the problem is that I like being secretary to a partner. It’s interesting and challenging. I just wish there was a little more respect and money to go along with the title.”
“Everyone in the office respects you.”
Emma shook her head. “Not everyone. School is definitely the way to go. Speaking of paralegals, did you hire Lee Matheson?”
“I should. He’s hot.” Tina shot her a look. “Did you know he’s engaged?”
Emma swung her foot in frustration; at least it looked good in her new shoes. “I know. While I was thinking about calling him, someone else snagged him. It’s like I’m the queen of hesitation. While I’m burning time calculating the pros and cons of a situation, I miss out. But I’m working on it.”
Tina made a sympathetic noise and then poked around inside the fridge. “What’s in here that belongs to you? I’m starving and I’m ready to mooch. Why are you eating so late anyway? Is Melissa looking down her nose at you over those granny glasses, guilting you into working harder? And they call me The Shark,” Tina said with obvious satisfaction.
“No, she’s in court today. I just didn’t feel very hungry.” Emma pushed her sandwich towards the other side of the table. “Here, you can eat the avocado and sprouts. I’ve got three rice bowls in the freezer for emergencies.”
“You’re a lifesaver,” Tina said reverently.
Emma got up to look in the freezer. She certainly was no shark, just a wuss, but she planned to work on it.
Tina pounced on the sandwich. “I sure could have used you today in court when the defendant got so nervous she spilled water all over my notes. You would have had the notes copied in triplicate.”
I’m definitely the queen of triplicate.
Emma examined the generic chicken-and-rice picture on one of the rice bowls. Being cautious was supposed to keep her life from becoming chaotic, but it had become mind-numbing.
“Hey, Emma, what’s wrong? You’re scowling at a rice bowl.”
Emma shoved the rice bowl back into the freezer and turned to face her successful friend. “I just feel left behind. I passed on Lee that day he flirted with me because I was waffling, and then I ended up with Brad.”
“I thought you might be hiding out here because of Brad.”
